Jerome Japanese Relocation Center Monument

The ten-foot-high granite marker and the concrete ruins of a smokestack in the distance are all that remain of the Jerome Japanese Relocation Center, a camp encompassing 10,054 acres of swampland between the Big and Crooked bayous. In operation from October 6, 1942, to June 30, 1944, Jerome held 8,497 Japanese Americans at its peak, 66 percent of whom were American citizens. Where there were once 500 acres of tar-papered barracks, including a school, fire station, hospital, and recreation buildings, there is now only quiet farmland. Jerome was the first of the ten relocation camps (see DE1) scattered across the country to close; it was then used as a German prisoner-of-war camp until the end of the war in Europe. The monument, dedicated by the Jerome Preservation Committee and Japanese American Citizens’ League, reads: “To those persons of Japanese ancestry who suffered the indignity of being incarcerated because of their ethnic background, may this monument serve to remind us all of these incidents and inspire us to become more vigilant and more alert in the safeguarding of the rights of all Americans, regardless of their race, color, or creed.”